


From the Same Tree

by misura



Category: The White Queen (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-01
Updated: 2017-08-01
Packaged: 2018-12-11 23:40:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11724996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/pseuds/misura
Summary: "You will give me a son," Richard tells her.





	From the Same Tree

**Author's Note:**

  * For [blueteak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueteak/gifts).



"You will give me a son," Richard tells her, stroking her stomach as if he can already feel new life quickening there, as if he knows her body better than she knows it herself. "Three sons."

She manages not to ask if he plans on naming the second one George. "Replacements?"

Her brother Richard needs no replacement, of course, but that is still a secret. For now.

At some point, preferably before a new boy is named Prince of Wales, someone will need to tell him.

"Yes," Richard says, but he frowns, as if the idea doesn't quite sit well with him. "Of a sort. I need an heir, Elizabeth. I must have a son. And it will surely please your mother, will it not, to have boys to care for as her grandchildren?"

_It will surely please my mother to see one of her children wear the crown, although I think she would have preferred it to be one of her sons._ A grandson will only be a consolation prize, compared to that.

"She approves of this match, does she not?" Richard asks. "Your engagement to Tudor was political - everyone knows that. How could it be otherwise, when the two of you have never even met? You are a stranger to him, and he to you."

_Whereas you are her dead husband's younger brother, who people say ordered the murder of her two sons. How, then, could she fail to approve?_

"The two of us - we are not strangers. You know me," Richard says, and it occurs to her to wonder if she is expected to offer any contribution at all to this conversation.

"As you know me, Uncle." They're the wrong words, but she speaks them out loud, even so.

_I love you. I cannot imagine loving anyone else, and I have no wish to marry if it is not to you._

For all his talking about heirs and matches, though, Richard is, at this moment, still a married man. He's cheating on his wife, the way her father cheated on her mother - the way, perhaps, all men cheat on the women they swear their eternal love and faithfulness to.

Richard holds himself still, keeping his body separated from hers. She might close the distance easily enough, draw him back to her.

He may not know her body as she does, but he knows it well enough to please.

"I see my brother in you sometimes," Richard says. "Edward. The brightness of his spirit, the generosity of his heart. I would never have willingly allowed harm to come to his sons, his heirs."

_I am not the one you need to convince._

"In time, I am sure I would have come to love them as my own."

_You named them bastards. You declared them illegitimate._ The strangest thing is: even so, she believes him. If he were not king, she would love him even so - why, then, would he not love his nephews, her brothers, whether or not they were a threat to his own claim to the throne?

"Love our sons, when they are born," she says. "Keep them safe. Prove that you can be the king my father was. The people will see and know what kind of man you are."

"I must kill Henry Tudor, first," Richard says. "I must have my parliament. I must ... Anne."

How much easier it must have been for her mother, to snare her crown, her king. By all stories, it didn't take more than a single meeting for him to decide to marry her, to decide he must have her by his side and in his bed for all time.

She thinks she knows how he felt, but as a woman, desiring a man still tied to another, things are not as simple, as easy.

"You must set her aside," she says. "For the good of England." _For me. For yourself. For your heirs._

"Not now," Richard says, his hands moving again, warming her skin. "I need her men, her affiliation. As I need yours. Only together can we stand against Tudor. Then, after, you and I will rebuild. We will make the House of York strong again. We will leave our heirs a better, stable kingdom."

"Yes," she says, and then, as he fitted his body to hers, his hands knowing exactly where to go, again, "Yes."


End file.
